


proposition

by v3ilfire



Series: keep you away from the down side of me [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 15:12:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8993557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v3ilfire/pseuds/v3ilfire
Summary: “Yes. You can go back to sleep, if you wish.” “What? No. No, I’m fine. Unless you wanted to join me. It’s a deceptively comfortable bed.” Cullen watched her pat the space next to her, unsure if he should be offended that she sounded surprised at her own statement.“It’s a tempting offer, but there is --”“-- work to be done,” she finished. “I’ve plenty of work for you up here, if you’re that keen on being a busybody.”The silence that befell them felt eons longer than it actually was, especially while Cullen struggled to process if he heard what he thought he’d heard and if it implied what he thought it implied. Tevra seemed to think nothing of it until they both became painfully aware of how beet red his face was.“Are you -- propositioning me?”





	

Tevra always announced herself with four knocks in quick succession, though this was the first time that she didn’t wait for Cullen to respond before letting herself into his drafty little corner of Skyhold. He greeted her with a smile, but it went unnoticed as her eyes darted around the room, looking for -- what was she looking for?    
“Are you alright?”   
“You need to hide me. Josephine’s got the Desrosiers here --”   
“Oh, Maker --”   
“Right?  _ That _ guy. Lord Pierren wants to meet me and I’ve had about twenty Orlesian nobles too many this week.”   
“Up the ladder, then, I’ll cover for you.” 

Without another word she launched herself towards the steps and scaled them two at a time, her feet just over the edge of his bedroom floor when Josephine announced herself, a small posse of Orlesians trailing close behind her. She was not convinced that the Inquisitor had  _ just _ slipped out the other door before she came in, but she knew better than to argue in front of her honored guests so she did not press the issue beyond two or three easily-deflected questions. Cullen made a note on the side of his war table notes to gloat about that at their next meeting.  
“Well, then. I suppose we shall have to discuss the matter later, Commander.” Josephine was smiling, but she was doing that  _ thing _ with her eyes that made him feel something like a scolded schoolchild, which is  _ not  _ a comfortable feeling for a man in his thirties.    
“As you wish, Ambassador.” 

Cullen had half-expected the elf hiding upstairs to come sliding down the ladder the moment that the door latched behind the Orlesians, but the longer she was absent the more he began to entertain the possibility that she escaped through the gaping hole in his roof. It wasn’t unlike her, considering how often his reports made thinly-veiled allusions to her falling out of trees, off rocky ridges, slipping into rivers … 

The sudden mental image of Tevra lying injured at the base of the tower inspired Cullen to set aside his quill for the moment and follow her to the second level. He was actually a little mortified to see the space in daylight hours, mostly at the occasional article of clothing haphazardly chucked wherever it happened to land. He knew the sad history of these clothes - late nights working downstairs meant collapsing in whatever he was wearing, and getting up before dawn pretty much guaranteed that the discarded tunics and trousers would lay on the floor until he finally ran low enough to send the whole mess down to be washed. The exhaustion and sloppy lifestyle seemed a small price to pay for the gains of the Inquisition, but judging by the pair of boots dangling lifelessly from the side of his bed, he wasn’t the only one constantly on the verge of collapse. 

He did not mean to wake Tevra when he went to check on her, but just based on how quickly she sat up the moment that a lone floorboard creaked underneath his foot, she had not meant to fall asleep in the first place.   
“Are they gone?” she slurred, slinging her disheveled braid back over her shoulder. Cullen choked back a laugh.   
“Yes. You can go back to sleep, if you wish.”    
“What? No. No, I’m fine. Unless you wanted to join me. It’s a deceptively comfortable bed.” Cullen watched her pat the space next to her, unsure if he should be offended that she sounded surprised at her own statement.   
“It’s a tempting offer, but there is --”   
“-- work to be done,” she finished. “I’ve plenty of work for you up here, if you’re that keen on being a busybody.” 

The silence that befell them felt eons longer than it actually was, especially while Cullen struggled to process if he heard what he  _ thought _ he’d heard and if it implied what he  _ thought _ it implied. Tevra seemed to think nothing of it until they both became painfully aware of how beet red his face was. 

“Are you -- propositioning me?”   
“Wha -- oh,  _ Mythal _ , n -- do you  _ want _ me to proposition you?” She couldn’t seem to finish a thought and he couldn’t seem to  _ start _ one. “I just meant -- I thought you’d want to take a break -- the joke was that  _ technically _ I’m in charge of y-- I just wanted you to take a nap! But do you  _ want _ me to, because, I mean -- well, I can certainly do a better job than  _ that _ .” Cullen couldn’t even conjure up what that could  _ begin _ to include. He could barely answer the question at hand because he didn’t really -- well, he  _ did _ want her to - did he really ask her if she was  _ propositioning _ him? Maker. Evidently he was still struggling to just  _ talk _ to her; he wouldn’t have a clue on what to do with her even if she  _ had _ been trying to seduce him. His life hadn’t exactly allowed much experience in regards to romance. “Cullen. You’re not talking and I’m a little bit worried that you’re not  _ breathing _ .”   
“I -- I’m sorry, I just -- I don’t know what I was thinking. This -- you’ll have to forgive me.” 

The one time Cullen found himself praying for an emergency messenger, there was not a single one to be found.  Instead, he got the focused gaze of the woman he cared for so,  _ so _ deeply; the same one who made him more nervous than singing the Chant in front of an entire hall full of Grand Clerics as a child and in a hundred of entirely different ways.   
“I really think you should sleep,” she concluded. Anything would be better than waiting for the floor to cave in under him, really, so as soon as she pat the bed next to her he forced his legs to take him there and allow him to fall into a seat at the edge of the mattress, head sunk deep into the palms of his hands. Tevra paid his embarrassment no mind, simply got to work in unclasping his various furs and buckles for him. “Maker, how do you wear all this all day? You may as well just drape Varric over your shoulders. He’s just as dense.” 

Despite his deep-seated horror, Cullen found himself slowly but surely succumbing to the tempting proximity of his pillow. In the time it took Tevra to balance his armor precariously on a chair, he pieced together just enough scattered shards of his dignity to _attempt_ to offer her the same side of his bed in which he found her. Unfortunately, she was eyeing the ladder downstairs in a way that suggested she didn’t have the same idea.  
“Alright,” she said. “Now, lie down and sleep. I’ll tell the messengers to direct emergencies to Cassandra. Everything else can wait.”  
“Are you --”  
“Yes. Sleep.”   
“You’re… not staying?”  
Tevra was visibly taken aback by the question. “Did you want me to? I just figured after -- well, you know. I didn’t know if --”   
“Please.” There was a moment in which he wasn’t sure she’d accept, but evidently they shared a desire to sleep so powerful it overcame the embarrassment of two grown adults dancing around the lines of a relationship neither of them knew how to navigate quite yet. 

Cullen watched in silence as she took her scarf and boots off. The room was just quiet enough for him to get caught up in how domestic the action was, in how the sunlight creeping through his ceiling caught in her hair and her eyelashes and lit her eyes right up, in the dance of the golden inks across her face. The world had no inkling of this side of her - of  _ either  _ of them - and that realization made the room feel suddenly smaller.   
  
Whatever stirred him to get up and move to her surprised both of them, especially when his shaking hands substituted for hers to undo the belt of her tunic. They’d been that close before on multiple occasions, but something felt different this time. Maybe it was the way she she smoothed the seams of his shoulders while he worked to return her efforts from earlier. It also could have been the sudden flush of color in her cheeks, but he blamed that on the lighting. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say  _ you _ were propositioning  _ me _ .” She’d meant it as a joke to ease the sudden silence, but …  
“I ... may be.”   
“Oh.” Maker, she  _ was _ blushing, but his answer kept her hands lingering on his arms, and her hands kept his heart racing firmly into his throat. “So are you going to kiss me or --”    


He did.

 

* * *

 

Cullen never would have guessed that the warmth of a familiar hand on his cheek and a kiss to his forehead would be be enough to ease him out of a fitful sleep. Then again, he never would have guessed that he’d be lucky enough to open his eyes to the smile of the most breathtaking woman he’d ever known.   
“Do you always sleep like that?” she asked. She was already mostly dressed, and for the first time Cullen found himself almost painfully aware of how all that cloth and leather hid the thousands of freckles that littered her arms and her back and her legs.    
“So I’ve been told by the medics here,” he said, turning his head to kiss the palm of her hand. She hummed, lips pursed. “Back to the real world, then?”   
“Yes, the one in which I put in a work order to get your roof fixed. My quarters will be empty while I’m in Orlais. They’re yours to use during the repairs.”   
“Tevra.”   
“That’s an order.” Her hand fell back to her lap. “Can I assume you’ll come to supper, or should I bring you something?” Ah. She knew him well.    
“For you, I will make an appearance.”   
“Oh, good. We can both hear the whispers firsthand.”

He was probably better off not telling her how much enjoyment he got from being the one to make  _ her _ blush, for once. For a while he thought her defenses were impenetrable, but seemed that sweet nothings were the way to catch Tevra Lavellan off guard.   
“I should go.” She didn’t move. She didn’t want to. He didn’t want her to.   
“Are you aware of just how beautiful you are?”   
“Cullen, if you say  _ one _ more kind thing to me, I swear I will  _ burst into flames _ .”   
“I love you.”  She froze, even as he reached up to fix a stray blonde curl behind her ear. “More than anything I’ve ever known.” Perhaps he overdid it, because now it was  _ his _ turn to worry that she’d stopped breathing. “Tevra?”

Well, if she couldn’t say it, she certainly knew how to kiss him to make sure he never wondered. 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm replaying DAI and i got really weirded out that cullen was Smooth™ in his big romance scene bc that nerd hasn't seen a fuckin titty in years, if ever.


End file.
